Governor's tax plan roughly produces an even split

Gov. Deval Patrick's tax proposals would carve evenly though the ranks of Massachusetts taxpayers, with families earning about $60,000 or less paying the same or less in income and sales taxes and higher earners paying more, the governor's senior budget and finance advisers explained Thursday.

Gov. Deval Patrick's tax proposals would carve evenly though the ranks of Massachusetts taxpayers, with families earning about $60,000 or less paying the same or less in income and sales taxes and higher earners paying more, the governor's senior budget and finance advisers explained Thursday.

"Roughly half would pay the same or less," said Secretary of Administration and Finance Glen Shor.

The day after the governor outlined his plans to increase the state income tax from 5.25 percent to 6.25 percent while cutting the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 4.5 percent to fund expansive improvements in transportation and education, Shor warned against focusing too closely on individual elements of the plan, saying "the proposal in its entirety improves the fairness of the tax code."

Under the plan, which would take effect in 2014 if it passes political scrutiny, families earning about $80,000 would pay several hundred dollars more a year, while those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would pay an additional $1,000 or so, Assistant Secretary Greg Mennis said.

Over $200,000? Those earners would pay an additional 1 percent of their income.

"Those are very rough figures," Shor said.

Patrick is proposing the elimination of 45 itemized income tax deductions, the most widely used of which is a $2,000 annual deduction for employee contributions to Social Security or other retirement systems. But his aides argued that the proposed doubling of the personal exemption for every taxpayer was a fairer way to carve the revenue pie.

"You can't look at (the deductions) in isolation," said Administration and Finance General Counsel David Sullivan. "These individual (deductions) are an inefficient way of delivering benefits. It's better for all taxpayers to receive the reductions through the increased personal deduction and the decrease in the sales tax rate."

Not mentioned in the governor's State of the State address Wednesday but scheduled to be presented in his annual budget is a plan to index increases in the state's 19-cent-per-gallon gas tax to inflation. That proposal would add less than a penny to the tax next year, Shor said.

The governor's plan also calls for periodic increases in fees, fares and tolls.

"When you look at total state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income, Massachusetts today is in the middle of the pack," Shor said. "This will not fundamentally change the picture of how we compare with our economic competitors."